Gladys Bentley: blues singer, tuxedo wearer and lady lover. In the words of Saidiya Hartman in her book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, “Bentley was abundant flesh, art in motion.”1 In the words of Bentley herself, from 1952 when she had left the stage and all that came with it, “a big, successful star – andContinue reading “The Miraculous Masculinity of Gladys Bentley”
Tag Archives: male impersonation
Lesbians on Stage: Costumes and Cross-Dressing
Lesbians and other women-loving-women have for a long time had the ability to hide in plain sight by taking to the public stage. When women were expected to only dress in skirts, a trousered role was a break – if one oriented in fantasy and performance – from the norm of heterosexual femininity. Playing aContinue reading “Lesbians on Stage: Costumes and Cross-Dressing”
Dressing Dykes 